


Withdrawal and Recovery II

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s04e16 On the Head of a Pin, Gen, Guilt, Self-Doubt, episode coda, hurt!Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-16
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-08 17:44:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6866662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The emptiness those words had left inside him, like the angel had reached in and scooped out his innards and left only the cold and dark of utter, irreversible failure behind, was something  with which he had no experience. Sure, he was a master at emotional avoidance, John had given him plenty of practice with that, so did Sam eventually, but this wasn't that, and all he could do was curl around himself and try to hold it in, to keep it from eating away at what was left of him.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Withdrawal and Recovery II

**Author's Note:**

> Post s4e16 _On the Head of Pin_ from Dean's POV

_The righteous man who begins it is the only one who can finish it._

Dean started awake, whole body going stiff for a second before he recognized the heavy, thrumming rumble of his baby's engine and relaxed incrementally again into the tight corner between the seat and the door. The glass against his forehead was cold. If he opened his eyes, he suspected there would be snow, or at the very least sleet and wind. The heater was rattling loudly in its battle to keep the interior warm, but it didn't need to try so hard. There was enough heat pouring off of Sam to warm an entire room. 

On instinct, Dean wanted to lean into that heat, to press himself up against it and see if it could permeate the hollow, frigid void that had settled in his chest at Cas' words. 

Alastair had beat him almost to the point Yellow Eyes had a couple of years ago—contusions of every size, shape, and color, lacerations, broken ribs, internal bleeding, bruised organs, and a concussion. According to Sam he'd been unconscious for days and in nearly as bad a shape as after the wreck. He suspected he owed at least some of his recovery to Cas, though Sam seemed pretty pissed at the angel for not doing more, but then they weren't exactly best buds under the best of circumstances either.

All of that, though, was nothing compared to the blow Cas dealt.

Physical wounds Dean could deal with, had dealt with most of his life, since his first major stab wound at fifteen and gunshot wound a year later. He'd suffered more damage to his body than a major league football team combined. He knew how to deal with physical pain, to compartmentalize it, push though it, push it down and back and get the damn job done. But this… 

The emptiness those words had left inside him, like the angel had reached in and scooped out his innards and left only the cold and dark of utter, irreversible failure behind, was something  with which he had no experience. Sure, he was a master at emotional avoidance, John had given him plenty of practice with that, so did Sam eventually, but this wasn't that, and all he could do was curl around himself and try to hold it in, to keep it from eating away at what was left of him.

He could feel Sam's eyes on him from the other side of the car, a constant, furtive vigil over the long miles. He kept his own closed, feigning sleep to keep the kid from asking him one more time if he was okay. He wasn't okay. He wasn't anywhere in the same universe as okay, but there was nothing Sam could do about it, and Dean couldn't burden him with this on top of everything else just yet. Maybe ever. 

Dean wasn't blind to the number of empty coffee cups collecting in a neat stack in the footwell, or the light sheen of sweat picking out across Sam's brow, or the way his hands, white-knuckled, were continuously clenching and wringing at the steering wheel. The kid was hurting. Cas wasn't specific on how Alastair was finally taken down. Sam was in the room at some point, Dean knew that much, but his memory was too fragmented, and Cas had not seen fit to fill in the blanks. The angel hadn't seemed pleased, though, at least not nearly as much as he should have been, having one less of Hell's finest roaming the earth. However it happened, whatever part Sam had played, it had taken its toll on him. The fact that he may have used his 'powers' left a sick knot in Dean's gut, and he left that thought alone for later. He couldn't deal with it right now. He was afraid to.

He tucked down deeper into his leather coat, turned further into the corner toward the door, and screwed his eyes shut so tight it made his head hurt—more than it did already anyway—and grappled with the blackness of sleep, yanking it down over himself in an effort to hide and forget. All least for a little while.

***

The silence woke Dean the next time. Sam had made a couple of stops at gas stations and a diner to refuel the car and get coffee. Always more coffee. Dean kept up the possum act to avoid Sam asking if he wanted food or anything else, because every time Dean turned him down, the kid's face fell apart, and if there was anything left of Dean's heart, it twisted hard at the sight, and he didn't want to see that right now; didn't know if he had the patience or stomach for it; wasn't sure how he might react. So, he hunched in the seat, eyes shut, and endured Sam's long, sorrowful, uncertain looks, felt his hand reach out a time or two and hover but then retract to leave Dean in peace. 

This silence was more permanent. This silence was the end of the road. It came with a long, weary sigh from Sam and the sound of his hands sliding off the wheel into his lap and just sitting for a moment, before there was the creak of the door and the sound of boots on gravel muffled a little by snow accumulation. He gave an unconscious little moan at the loss of his baby's soothing rumble, bit back on it hard when he felt Sam swing back to look at him, and started to straighten in the seat. A minute later, Sam was opening his door, hunkering his great, Sasquatch height down in the space like Dean was a child who needed coaxing to get out of the car after a long journey that ended in the driveway of some vague relative who was more stranger than family.

'We're here, Dean.'

Dean flinched from the sound of Sam's voice, pulled away without thinking. He hadn't realized how accustomed he'd become to the silence on the road, how much he didn't want to give that up now, how vital it was to help him keep the fractured pieces of himself together. He blinked blearily at the hand offered down to him, took it reluctantly, but slipped to the side and leaned against his girl as soon as his feet were more or less under him and holding him up. His heart hammered in his chest, blood beating in his ears, so that he could hardly hear Bobby's greeting and was in no way prepared for the arm that looped around his waist and helped support his weight up the stairs and into the house. 

Bobby gave no indication if he noticed how Dean stiffened or tried to pull away, because damnit! The touch was so warm, so wanted, so sought after, but he couldn't give into it. If he relaxed for only a second, this thing inside him was going to break him down, shatter him like rock under the pressure of freezing water.

His knees were so wobbly no one tried to take him any further than the library, and soon enough he was nestled under a pile of quilts that smelled faintly of cedar and lavender, and Sam was tugging gently at his bootlaces. Dean sank into the warmth, tried to pull it into himself, but it did nothing to abate that cold emptiness behind his ribs, and he wondered if there was anything at all that ever would again. 

***

Dean had to learn a very long time ago which sounds were a threat and which were not and which he needed to learn to ignore. He'd gotten accustomed to the general silence of his own single motel rooms with only the occasional raised voices through thin, paperboard walls, the clanking of water pipes, or the whir of a fan. It took a few days to let Sam's sounds back into his life, when he'd taken him away from Stanford that night, as something expected and normal, something he could put away in the safe-to-ignore category. Except for his sounds of distress. There were a lot of those Dean came to find, most of them having to do with nightmares, first of Jess, then of random assholes who all turned out to be killers of one kind or another, then of Dean going to hell, and now—

The hitch in Sam's breathing was all it took to bring Dean around. He wasn't fighting ready and no where close to alert, in part due to the painkillers Sam was religiously keeping in his system, but he was awake nonetheless, to hear the soft, pained moan from the couch a couple of feet away. Sam was curled in on himself, knees tucked up toward his chest, and even in the dark, Dean could tell he was shaking despite his own thick cocoon of quilts. He caught a softly hissed curse and heard something hard land haphazardly at the other end of the couch. He cracked his eyes open to see the faint glow of Sam's phone, sunk between the couch arm and the cushion, before the screen winked out to darkness once again. 

Sam turned on his side and drew his arms around himself and pulled the blankets in closer. Dean could hear his teeth grind together and wondered if the kid was coming down sick. This was all classic Sammy with the flu, or pneumonia, or bronchitis, or whatever the hell bug he'd managed to pick up from the germ-y little brats at the ten thousand schools they kept pushing him through on John's endless tramp from one side of the country to the other and back again. And again. And again. It wasn't that Sam had been a sickly kid. Far from it. He was just rarely given the downtime he needed to get truly well, and it wasn't like they'd had a regular pediatrician for the kid, or the cash to throw down for a doctor visit or medicine. Not most of the time anyway.

Sam squirmed under the blankets again. Dean stayed still, listening, ears pricked for a cough or a tell-tale wheeze. What he heard was a mournful keening, like a wounded animal. So low he had to strain to hear it, wasn't positively certain he even was hearing it, until he felt the sharp fissure it created in the very center of him. Something cracked inside him at that sound, splintered painfully, wresting his breath in his lungs for one eternal heartbeat.

And then he remembered.

He remembered that there was a reason he'd kept fighting, a reason he came back to the shitty motel rooms every night after every hunt long after he was of an age with enough experience to leave; a reason he had driven circuitous routes to the west to meet up with John for four years, routes that always took him through Palo Alto; a reason he'd sold his soul and gone to hell; and a reason he had come back. It was lying two feet away from him, fighting for rest, fighting for peace, struggling to find a path through the dark.

Sam.

Dean breathed again. Slowly. It hurt a little, like when sudden heat was applied to skin that had gone numb with the cold. The icy weight inside him was still there, but there was a crack, a breach that oozed what he was so afraid he had lost entirely…all the love he had for the only family he had left. Sammy. It had been enough before, to carry him through one day at a time. He would make it enough again.

He shifted in the chair, springs creaking in protest, enough that he could reach out a hand and unerringly find his little brother's soft hair against the coarse fabric of the couch in the dark. He sifted his fingers in, rubbed little circles with the tips against his scalp, like he used to do years ago to put the kid to sleep on rough nights when John was gone too long. He felt Sam freeze up for a second, startled at the sudden contact, the show of affection that had been too long absent between them. 

'Get some shut-eye, Sammy,' Dean croaked, voice hoarse from his self-imposed silence. 'Whatever devil's ridin' you, it'll still be there in the mornin'.'

He threaded his fingers a little deeper in the thick, soft waves, rubbed gently at the knotted muscles at the base of Sam's skull. Sam let out a slow, trembling sigh, and Dean felt him go quiet under his hand. The clock ticked on the mantle. Sam's breathing evened out, and the couch moaned quietly under his weight settling into sleep. Dean let himself drift, hand still in Sam's hair, and let sleep pull him back down, this time to a deeper rest that promised, if not hope, at least a reason to wake up tomorrow.


End file.
